Re: virus: The "science" of memes?

XYZ Customer Support (xyz@starlink.com)
Fri, 13 Dec 1996 12:46:53 -0700


> From: Alexander Williams <thantos@alf.dec.com>

>>Evolution is not about replicators and since the evidence shows that
>>individuals do not evolve, then individuals cannot be vehicles for
>>imaginary selfish genes. Replicating is not evolving.

>One obvious point to make which may bring forth an obvious fallacy:

>Here, you're just willfully wrong.

In your wildest dreams.

>There's an ALife program called Tierra, written by Tom Ray, which starts
>with an innoculation of a single organism which does nothing but
>replicate/reproduce itself. Its just that sometimes mutations make
>changes.

A made-up program with made-up rules is evidence?

And you accuse me of willful fallacies?

>In every run, one sees major evolution of the replication technique.
>Individuals, its true, don't evolve, but in the case of memetics humans
>aren't the individuals, they're the Tierran "soup," if you will, the
>environment in which memetic `individuals,' like individual genes,
>reproduce, mutate and die as well as are born. In an /environment/, the
>contents may in fact evolve and that damn quickly.

Evolution is not about reproduction. Reproduction is how evolution
get passed on. Replicating is not a part of evolution, it is the result
of evolution.